


Higher Than the Empire State

by the_sarcastic_summer (orphan_account)



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: AU, Alternate Dimensions, M/M, steve goes crazy and stuff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-06
Updated: 2013-07-06
Packaged: 2017-12-17 22:09:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/872494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/the_sarcastic_summer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve wakes up in an alternate universe where he is the only Avenger and SHIELD is all about peace. He constantly flickers between the two worlds and knowing which one is real grows harder and harder. He can't choose between the world where he is the only Avenger and the world where he has a team, but soon enough he'll have to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Higher Than the Empire State

**Author's Note:**

> Title from We are Young for reasons I haven't yet decided. Uploading this to inspire myself to write more. The writing gets better in the later chapters, so please stick around!

                “Rogers, we have reasons to believe you may have relapsed.” Fury examined Steve from across the table with his one eye.

                Steve looked back, slightly confused. He had woken up today, and everything had felt slightly _off._ It was the same hallways he was used to, and the same people bustling down them. Fury had his power coat on, and his office looked the same, but everything still seemed different.

                Fury pointed to an open file in front of him. “It says here that when you woke up this morning, you referred to the building as ‘the Helicarrier.’”

                “Yes, sir, I did,” Steve responded, arching an eyebrow at the question.

                Fury sighed, and sat back in his seat. “Rogers, would you mind telling me what you remember about yesterday?”

                “Uh, yesterday we took down minor threat level villains The Bombshell and the Moth, sir.”

                “Can you give me some more detail?”

                Steve frowned. Usually they just filed a report, and that was enough. He had turned in his report last night before going to bed, but it wasn’t really a bother relaying the mission, so he complied with Fury’s request.

                “Yes, sir. Agent Romanov failed to pull off an undercover assignment, so they sent us in. The Bombshell set up some bombs in the lower level of a parking garage, but they failed to go off, so Agent Barton easily detained him. The Moth was harder, as her fire-hurling powers were working fine, but we soon found that the Hulk was impervious to fire, so he held her until a helicopter came and carted them both away. Agent Stark and I both sustained minor injuries in the form of burns, but overall the mission was a success,” Steve finished.

                “And the us you refer to, you are speaking of the Avengers?” Fury gazed at him, his eye steady.

                “Who else?” Steve snapped, getting sick of the questioning.

                Fury sighed and picked up the phone. “Can someone send Banner in here?” he growled into it and slammed it down, before looking back at Steve. “This is going to be sort of hard for you to understand. I know, because you’ve done this a couple times already. Dr. Banner is going to talk to you and explain everything.”

                “Explain what?” Steve asked, his tone sharp.

                Fury rubbed his head. “I’m really not in any position to tell you, Rogers.”

                Steve started to say something, but he was cut off by the sudden entrance of Dr. Banner.

                “Bruce,” Steve said warmly, and gave him a smile. “Morning. Feeling rested?”

                Bruce paused, and gave Steve a short nod. “Yeah, I slept fine.” He turned to face Fury. “You wanted to see me?”               

                Fury gestured to Steve. “He’s had a relapse. He just told me he thought yesterday he fought some super villains with the _Avengers.”_

                Bruce sighed and looked over at Steve, who glared back.

                “Look, I’m sure now that Bruce is here you can sort out whatever problems you had with yesterday’s mission.” Steve stood up and made his way to the door.

                Bruce quickly stepped in front of him. “Steve, I need to speak to you.”

                Steve sighed. “Okay, speak.”

                Bruce bit his lip. “It was the Avengers again, wasn’t it?”

                Steve nodded slowly. “I mean- yeah, I was with the Avengers, and so were you.”

                Bruce sighed. “Okay, here’s the thing, Steve. You are a superhero, and you were given the super soldier serum. You were frozen in the ice, but that’s where that world ends. The Avengers are a myth. They are something you made. You were the first so-called Avenger, but you were also the last.”

                Steve stared at him blankly. It wasn’t April first, was it? No, it was snowing when he looked out the window this morning, and it had been barely December yesterday, so what was Bruce on about?

                “No. You’re the Hulk, Tony’s Iron Man, Thor is Thor, Clint is Hawkeye, and Nat is Black Widow.” Steve laughed a bit. “Obviously.”

                Bruce shook his head. “No. Sorry, but no. The Avengers… It’s all just a clever lie made by your mind. It’s not uncommon, from a psychological point of view. You’ve been put in an impossible circumstance, so your mind has made a way of coping. Here, you feel out of place, a bit like a freak, so you create a world where you’re one among many.”

                “No!” Steve said, exasperated. “No, that’s- that’s not right! I’m not insane or anything else!” He pushed his way past Bruce out of the door. This was just a silly joke taken too far; he just needed to find Tony. Tony wouldn’t take a joke that far. Tony would tell him.

                He tore down the hallway and into Tony’s room. He didn’t bother knocking; he just threw the door open and walked in.

                Tony looked up at him. He was sitting on his bed, reading a book. He gave Steve a very un-Tony smile.

                “Morning, Steve,” he said, which alone threw Steve off. Tony never called him Steve; it was always Captain, or Capsicle, Cap, or something along the lines of that.

                “Morning,” Steve said warily. “Bruce and Fury have gone off their rocker. They’re telling me that everything after the ice is wrong, in my mind anyway. That the Avengers and all aren’t real.” He laughs a bit. “Crazy, right?”

                Tony’s smile flickers away. “It’s happened again, hasn’t it? You’ve had a break with reality.”

                Steve stared at him. “Stop it. It’s not funny, stop it.”

                Tony glanced uncertainly at him and bit his lip. “I don’t know how to…” He trailed off, and breathed a sigh of relief when Bruce entered the room.

                “There you are. You made us nervous. We were worrying you would run much farther than this.” Bruce gave Steve a friendly smile. “You always get a little antsy after we tell you. Don’t worry, we don’t plan on caging you or anything, we’ve tried that. We’ve found that it’s better to let you continue with your daily routine.”

                Steve frowned. “You’ve tried caging me?”

                Bruce sighed. “It was an idea. Not a good one, admittedly. Look, Steve, this is hard, but it’ll be alright, yeah? I’m working on a medicine that we think will keep you anchored.”

                Tony watched Bruce and Steve talk as though he was watching a scene play out before slowly returning back to his book.

                “This isn’t really here, though. This isn’t how my world is!” Steve insisted, his distress becoming evident.

                “Fury! Fury, can we get Barton in here?” Bruce called out, before turning to Steve. “Steve, I know this is odd and I know this is weird but can you just work with me? These are all just very, very convincing dreams. They’re just dreams.”

                Steve growls. “That’s not true! I know dreams, and everything hasn’t been one!”

                Tony carefully put his book down and stood up. He placed his hand on Steve’s shoulder. “Hey, can we calm down? It’s really going to be alright, I promise.”

                Steve shoved Tony away, and Tony slammed against the wall, leaving a dent.

                “Barton!” Bruce shouted.

                Steve only saw a glimpse of Clint before he felt the prick of a needle and felt himself drifting off to sleep.

                Tony peered at Steve “Are you alright now? Bruce says to tell you we’ve never had to do that before, and that we really don’t like doing that.”

                Steve pulls himself up and looks around. It was clearly the SHEILD infirmary, but why- ah. Clint had sedated him.

                “I’m fine,” Steve said honestly, rubbing his head.

                Tony beams. “Right. Good. I was getting worried.” He sat back in his chair by Steve’s bed.

                Steve looks over at him. “So this is still that world, that non-SHEILD world.”

                Tony nodded, then shook his head. “Well, sort of. See? You get it once you calm down, though that’s not exactly right. This is SHEILD, and we deal with alien threats, but we do it differently. Your SHEILD is all brawn, and we’re all brain. We use diplomacy for the most part, produce weapons in the case that diplomacy doesn’t work, though that hasn’t happened yet, and sometimes threats.” He shrugs. “It works.”

                Steve stared at him. His Tony, the _real_ Tony, would have mocked him for making a mistake, and corrected him in a condescending tone.

                “You aren’t really Tony.”

                Tony gave him a tight smile. “I forgot. I’m a bit of a pretentious arse in your world, aren’t I? I think you’ll find people are a bit different.”

                “Do I ever remember any of that? Any of what you say really happens?”

                Tony shrugs. “You don’t really remember. You just get used to it, I suppose.” Tony bit his lip. “Listen, I’m not really supposed to be talking to you. You’re supposed to be resting. Go back to sleep.” He pulled his glasses out of his shirt pocket and put them on and turned back to his book.

                Steve sighed and fell back down onto the mattress and almost immediately drifted off to sleep.

-

                He jolted awake what seemed to be merely seconds later.

                “Steve!” Tony said sharply. “Get up! We have to train!”

                “You said I was to rest!” Steve glared at him.

                Tony raised an eyebrow. “No, I didn’t. You slept for seventy years; one would think you’ve done quite enough resting.”

                Only then did Steve properly look around the room. It wasn’t the infirmary he had fallen asleep in, but instead the bedroom he had woken up in every morning since the first mission.

                “You’re- You’re Tony. Real, proper Tony,” Steve said slowly, already certain that it was. Other Tony was nice and soft spoken, but not this one that had woken him.

                “Yeah, Capsicle. What, thought I was Legolas or something?” Tony rolled his eyes.

                “No, but I mean, Iron Man, you’re Iron Man?”

                “No, I’m the tooth fairy,” Tony replied, his voice thick with sarcasm.

                “I need to speak to Banner.”

                In ten minutes time, Steve found himself sitting in Fury’s office with Bruce, Tony, and Fury himself.

                “And it seemed real?” Bruce asked, continuing his questioning.

                “Everything seemed real, except for the lack of Avengers. It didn’t seem like a dream, there was no time skips, nothing out of the ordinary happened.” Steve ran a hand through his hair. He had relayed every little detail of the- dream? hallucination? No matter, he had told them it all, from the big things such as him being the only super hero, to small things such as Tony wearing glasses and being nice.

                Bruce took off his glasses and squinted at Steve. “Well, what I said in the other world can be applied here. You are in an impossible circumstance, and your mind may have created this world as a way of coping.” He paused. “It’s not a perfect explanation, but I’m not really a psychologist. I’ll have someone look into this.”

                Tony raised his hand. “Steve, you said that other Bruce was working on a pill to keep you there?”

                Steve nodded, and Fury seemed to almost immediately perk up.

                “Can we take this as a threat? Maybe a hostage situation? This could be considered a declaration of war, and we can bomb people who declare war!”

                Tony rolled his eyes. “Easy tiger. I doubt that the pill could honestly keep Steve there, seeing as if the world’s not real, neither would the pill, and since it’s in Steve’s head, bombs are out of the question. I was just thinking I could work on an actual pill to help you, if it happens again.”

                Steve nodded, a bit surprised at Tony actually being helpful.

                “For now, just tell us if you do it again, okay?” Bruce asked, trying to wrap up the meeting.

                “Yeah, alright.”

                Bruce, Tony, and Steve were all shooed out of Fury’s office, who claimed he had ‘bigger fish to fry than just an insane superhero.’

                Tony and Bruce both went down to the lab to work on the pill among other things. Steve walked down to the Helicarrier’s kitchen, because going insane is an energy-zapping task.

                Clint was already in the kitchen when Steve entered. He gave him a small smile before saying, “Fury sent out a warning about you. It’s not really your fault, you know. Soon we’re all going to go insane after dealing with Tony for so long.”

                Steve laughed. “You would have loved my messed up world; Tony was practically a saint.”

                Clint smirked. “I can’t even imagine that. It’s beyond comprehension.”

                They both chuckled, and Clint handed him a cup of coffee. “I assumed you’d be pretty wiped out.”

                “I am, despite the fact that I spent maybe five minutes in my hallucination before you sedated me. Well, not you, but other you.”

                Clint nodded, understanding what he meant. “Look, I actually have to do some clean-up work from yesterday, apologize to some people whose homes were wrecked, that sort of thing, but I’ll see you later, okay?”

                “Yeah, alright.” He watched Clint leave, and idly wondered what Clint would be like in the world he had created. No matter, he didn’t really have any plans to return there.

-

                Tony rubbed Steve’s shoulder gently, smiling when Steve finally opened his eyes and groaned.

                “This is…” He glanced around. “Infirmary. Right, so this would be the one where the Avengers aren’t real, the one I hallucinated.”

                “You know, it’s sort of odd that you always write off this one as being the lie,” Tony remarked in a way that reminded Steve of the real Tony. “If it were me, the world without the men in iron suits flying around, demigods, and green monsters would be the one that wasn’t real.”

                “How do you know all this?” Steve asked suspiciously.

                Tony shrugged, “We talk,” he said simply. “Sometimes you draw things, like the Hulk.”

                He considered this for a moment before Steve shook his head. “But I have no memories of here and so many memories of there. Besides, when I fell asleep here, I woke up there, and they told me here was the hallucination.”

                “We call that flickering,” a voice from the doorway said. Steve’s head jolted up as he realized where he had heard that voice before. “Sorry,” it continued. “I’ve sort of been eavesdropping. We try not to introduce me to you as soon as this. It shocks you a bit, seeing as you always expect me to be dead.” The man gave Steve a sad sort of grin.

                Steve gaped back at him. “Phil,” he said in a strangled tone of voice. “I mean, Agent Coulson. I mean, sir,” he babbled.

                Phil gave him a slight smile. “Phil is fine, Steve. We’ve actually become quite close, when you stop apologizing for letting me die.”

                “I don’t think I will apologize, because you aren’t real, because I clearly added you to this hallucination because I missed you.”

                “If that’s what you think,” Phil said, slightly amused. “Anyway, we call it flickering when you go back to that world. It happens more frequently closer to the relapse. Soon, they’ll be few and far between, until they don’t exist at all, and if all goes well with the pill, we should be able to fix this. The previous times, the pill wasn’t near complete, but we believe we’ll have it done in time this cycle.”

                “How many times has this happened?”

                “About seven times, counting this,” Tony said, his voice a bit weary.

                “Funny I don’t remember any of this,” Steve responded, and noted to himself that he was a bit snappier than usual, a bit harsher. Perhaps he was a bit different in this world as well. “One would think you all would get tired of taking care of me and be happy for me to disappear into the other world!”

                Tony frowns at him. “Don’t be ridiculous! We would all gladly explain this world to you hundreds of times then to have you sit in a corner living in a fantasy world!”

                His tone reminded Steve of how different this man was than the one he knew. He would have to ask Bruce-real Bruce- what reason there was behind that. Thinking of the personality changes, Steve was reminded of Clint.

                “What’s Clint like?” Steve liked, breaking the silencing that had filled the room.

                Phil shrugs. “He’s quiet and strong. You don’t really talk much to him.” Steve nodded slowly. He expected as much. While he got along quite well with all members  of the team, he wasn’t really friends with all of them. In the other world-the real one- Bruce and Tasha were the people he was closest with. Here, he could tell Bruce and him had a very professional relationship, while apparently he and Phil were quite close.

                “Anyway, the reason I’m here is to check if you were awake- you are; if you have been flicking-you have; and to take you up to Bruce’s office.”

                Steve rolled his eyes. “Why do I need to talk to Bruce? He’s not a real psychologist.”

                Tony cleared his throat. “Actually, he really is. I know where you think you come from, Bruce is more of an inventive and medical scientist, but that’s not so here. So you should go talk to him because you always feel better after that.”

                Steve sighed. “Not like I really have a choice,” he muttered to himself as he slowly stood up, silently complying to go.

                Phil turned and marched out of the room, and Steve followed him like a lost puppy. Tony picked up his book, and once again began reading.


End file.
